Obama needs to go bigger

6:16 PM,
Feb. 24, 2014

President Barack Obama

Written by

E.J. Dionne Jr.

Republicans are unhappy that President Obama is invoking his executive powers to govern in the face of a do-nothing-in-2014 House of Representatives. To hear them talk, you would think our chief executive is modeling himself on the late Hugo Chavez and wants to seize dictatorial control.

This, of course, is nonsense. In fact, Obama has in many ways been less aggressive in his use of executive authority than his predecessors.

Take the matter of executive orders. According to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Obama issued 147 executive orders ...